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The modern college for women, evolving by rapid growth from recent simple beginnings to its present highly complex state, is unquestionably still in the process of development. A glance over the changes already accomplished brings conviction that the present situation is but a stage in the life history of a virile institution. That present condition is explicable only by a knowledge of its beginnings. The conception by the founder, the inheritance of his ideals, the impress of early traditions, and the effect of the immediate environment have served inevitably to produce variation. One woman's college differs from another in the courses which it offers its students, in the emphasis which it places upon values, in characteristics academic and social, because of certain elements which brought it into existence and certain factors which have been at work on it ever since. That the variation is on the whole comparatively slight points toward an integrity of purpose highly creditable to the protagonists of education for women. A study of the modern curriculum should, then, receive illumination by a knowledge of early curriculum, its reason for being, and the modifications and adaptations which have attended its growth during its struggle for existence. If history has one function, it is to interpret the present by the past. If the present is to become significant as a signpost to the future, such an interpretation is essential. The colleges upon whose curricula the study herein is based were chosen as fair samples of the varieties of modern colleges for the education of women: Vassar College, "the oldest of the well-equipped and amply endowed colleges for women in the United States," and Wellesley College, closely paralleling it in age and rapidity of development; Radcliffe College, a pioneer in establishing a college wherein women, without coeducation, could receive instruction from a university for men, and Barnard College with a like affiliation with a men's university; Mount Holyoke, the most important college which developed from seminary beginnings. The following chapters are presented: (1) The development of the curriculum; (2) A comparative study of modern curriculum; (3) Summary of the study of the modern curriculum; (4) College teaching; (5) The relation between major studies and vocations; and (6) The socialization of the women's college. A bibliography and an index are included. Individual chapters contain footnotes. (Contains 7 figures.) [Best copy available has been provided.]

Chapter XIX of Volume 2 introduces the volume's statistical tables and discusses the 1907 education census, and American education types and variations. Chapter XX provides state common school statistics on population, school age, enrollment, attendance, school term, teachers, revenues and expenditures, and finances. Chapter XXI covers city school system statistics, including population, grade distribution, enrollment, attendance, personnel, property and expenditures, certain cities' kindergarten enrollments across grades, property, receipts, and expenditures. Chapter XXII includes university, college, and technological school statistics for degrees conferred, finances and property, permanent improvements, benefactions, uniform standards, public and private institution undergraduate and graduate enrollment, professors and instructors, student summaries by department, women's colleges, and state universities and other partially state-funded institutions of higher education. Chapter XXII includes statistics on agricultural and mechanical colleges, including students, property, income, endowments, new buildings, study courses, professors, undergraduates, short and special course students and graduates, students in industrial courses in institutions for colored students, and disbursements. Chapter XXIV covers statistics on professional schools, including those of theology, law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine. Chapter XXV gives statistics on public and private normal schools, including enrollment, income, property, expenditures, and public appropriations. Chapter XXVI covers secondary school statistics for public and private high schools and academies on enrollment, graduates, class size, single-sex and coeducational schools, property, and income. Chapter XXVII covers manual and industrial training statistics on cities with public-school manual training, instructors and students, student classification, property and expenses, manual and industrial training schools, and industrial schools for Indian children. Chapter XXVIII gives statistics on commercial and business schools, including schools, instructors, students, day and night course students, commercial-course students and graduates, English-course students, amanuensis-course students and graduates, and telegraphy students. Chapter XXIX gives nursing school statistics on class B schools affiliated with hospitals for the insane or feeble-minded, and class A hospitals, which exclude those in class B. Chapter XXX covers statistics on schools for the colored race, including enrollment of whites and negros in 16 former slave states and the District of Columbia, common-school statistics, teachers and students in public high schools, and teachers, students, and finances of secondary and higher schools. Chapter XXXI gives an excerpt from the New York State Reformatory at Elmira board of managers 30th annual report, as well as overall statistics on U.S. state reformatory and industrial school inmates, inmate parentage, population and their education, training, and facility property and expenses. Chapter XXXII gives statistics on schools for the defective classes, including enrollment, instructors, property, and expenses of state and private schools for the blind, deaf, and feeble-minded; music and industrial training for the blind; graduates; and pupils learning speech and industrial pupils in state institutions for the deaf. [For Volume 1, see ED620522.]